I’ve long known about the work of Elaine Pagels and have read some of her books. This book is her autobiography with a few summaries of her work thrown in.

Much of her life and work has been informed by loss. Her son died at age ten as a result of a heart defect that he was born with. Her husband later died in a terrible hiking accident, leaving Elaine to raise two adopted children.

I have always been impressed by Pagels and her work in the area of Gnosticism. She is a capable scholar who knows her field well. The fact that she soldiered on in spite of all the tragedy in her life impresses me all the more.

We preempt our regularly scheduled blog to bring you the royal wedding sermon by The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry, the 27th Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church. It is well worth fourteen minutes of your time. You may want to have a Kleenex handy.

Ann was a well-known figure to Episcopalians online. I knew her through her blog, through the Episcopal Café, and through Facebook.

I was aware that she had some lung issues, but somehow I had the impression that those issues were under control. However, Ann announced before Ash Wednesday that she was not going to observe Lent this year – she had enough to focus on with her own health. She, in effect, put herself into self-managed hospice care. Somewhere around Easter she called in the hospice professionals. Her daughter let us know last week that Ann died peacefully in her sleep.

We will miss her.

I loved reading her blog when she actively maintained it. She was a founder of the Episcopal Café and an active contributor until recently. I once wrote an article for the Café in which I described how, though an Episcopalian, I had a big problem with the Trinity and that my theology was much closer to that of rabbinic Judaism. She posted a comment on Facebook saying, “Someone doesn’t understand the Trinity.” That kind of irked me, but she was right. I still don’t understand the Trinity.

Ann was also a Facebook friend. She would occasionally click Like on one of my posts. I appreciated that. She loved baseball, as, of course, do I. She was a big-time Cubs fan. While still in the Bay Area I was a Giants fan, but after moving back to SoCal in 2015 I had no choice but to resurrect my loyalty to the team of my childhood, the Dodgers. There was some discussion a while back about bringing the designated hitter to the National League. Ann posted her outrage to Facebook. A FB friend replied that it wasn’t that big of a deal. And replied, “Yes it is!” I fully agreed with her.

In the present volume author Philip Jenkins discusses the period between the final books of the Old Testament and the first books of the New Testament. He describes how ideas like our modern conceptions of Satan and the end times developed after the Old Testament was closed out and before the New Testament began to be written. In fact, Jenkins does write both about books of the Old Testament and books of the New Testament. His main focus, however, is the period of these “crucible years,” as he calls them. He defines this as the period between 250 and 50 BCE.

Jenkins takes the perspective that the Qumran sect (responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls) arose in protest against the Hasmonean priest-kings (the Hasmoneans arising from the Maccabees who took back the temple from the Seleucids). He sees the Qumran sect as being different from the Essenes, though many scholars believe the Qumran group was the Essene sect. In addition to Satan and the end times Jenkins points out that angels appear much more frequently in the writing of the crucible years than in Old Testament writings.

There is a lot more material as well, so if this is a topic that interests you I highly recommend Crucible of Faith.

Yesterday was Fr. Rob’s last Sunday at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church. We will miss him. At least I will miss him. But I think it’s accurate to say that we collectively will miss him.

Fr. Rob first joined us on All Saints’ Sunday 2016. He has provided us with some superb leadership. He certainly gave the profile committee on which I served some much-needed guidance. I believe he has done the same for the vestry and the search committee. He has taken a personal interest as I have been developing my web and writing business.

I haven’t agreed with him on everything. We disagree on the dating of certain books of the Bible as well as on Biblical exegesis. I don’t like his emphasis on evangelism. But I love his high church mentality and his respect for the liturgy. He brought vestments out of the sacristy that I believe had sat untouched for a number of years.

It would be good if he could stay a while longer since we have not yet found a new rector, but the mileage we have paid him to come down from Tulare means that his earnings are maxed out in the eyes of the Church Pension Fund. That, combined with the wording of his contract, means that an extension is not possible.

Fr. Rob is one of those people about whom I can honestly say:

Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better,but because I knew you, I have been changed for good.

Marcus Borg was one of the great thinkers in the realm of progressive Christianity. We lost him in 2015, far too soon. He wrote a number of books aimed at helping us fit Christianity into a modern framework.

The present volume is an anthology. It contains book excerpts, sermons, lectures, and blog posts. The themes are familiar: the historical Jesus vs. the post-Easter Jesus, reading the Bible without taking it literally, Jesus’s fight against the domination system, and so forth. There is nothing here that you won’t find in his other books.

Strictly speaking, I don’t know that this book was entirely necessary. However, The Christian Century thought it important enough to give it a featured review. And from my perspective, anything that keeps Borg alive in our memories and thinking is a Good Thing.

I did something old-fashioned a couple of weeks ago. I responded to a postal mail solicitation to subscribe to a physical, paper magazine. It was from The Christian Century to which I was a long-time subscriber. I let the subscription lapse, along with many other print magazines, when I was laid off in 2014. But I always enjoyed the publication, and the price was really good. In fact I looked for an equivalent price online so I wouldn’t have to wait so long for my subscription to start. I couldn’t find one.

So I wrote a check, put it in the return envelope, and mailed it off. Now I still have probably another four weeks or so before my first issue shows up. But it will be good to be seeing the magazine again.

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Mike Christie

I live with my wife Terry and Tasha, our beagle-border terrier mix, in Hemet, which is in the San Jacinto Valley, on the eastern edge of Southern California's Inland Empire. I am actively working on developing a freelance writing and web content business. Details are on my web site:http://mikecwebandwriting.com/.

This blog is about the personal side of my life. I love my Kindle iPad app, cooking, watching cooking shows on television, and writing this blog. I am an Episcopalian and am happy to be a member of Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd here in Hemet.